Through the Night
by SorrowsFlower
Summary: If only he cared... If only she knew... Regret comes too late. Pain comes too swiftly and stays too long. And Hope, that fickle creature, rarely shows itself in these dark days... *CloTi 50 sentence challenge; Yeah! I finally got around to making one!*
1. Chapter 1: Tifa

Hiya!

So... I've been seeing quite a few of these all around, and I thought I'd give it a try. The first 25 sentences are from Tifa's POV and fit into the timeline from Case of Tifa to the part in ACC where she gives Cloud the lecture of a lifetime. Gotta love Teef ^_^ They're kinda a bit more emo than I intended them to be, but at that time in her life, I think she's entitled to a little emo-ness. Besides, she cooperated more than Cloud did this time, which is a nice change from the usual for her *high-fives mini-Tifa on left shoulder*

Anyway, this is my first time doing something like this, so go easy on me, please! The words were mostly pulled out of various sources: snippets of my everyday life (especially 22-24, lol), stuff my professors spewed out, or from random words my friends gave me... and I kinda just worked from there. The next 25 sentences will be in Cloud's POV at around the same time. Hope you enjoy 'em!

So... Here we go...

**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own Final Fantasy or any of its characters.

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**01 Choice:** Her heart was pounding with a mixture of unexplained terror and foolish reluctant hope as she asked him the question that would mend or ultimately break her heart: "Which is it, a memory or us?"

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**02 Family:** Like a foolish child playing house, she had desperately tried to build one and scrambled to hold them together, but his leaving had destroyed that dream.

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**03 Loss:** "He's not here anymore..." -she spoke the words with annoyance, resignation and a sense of emptiness as she was reminded, once again, that he was indeed 'not here anymore'.

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**04 Duality:** By day, she was the angel of the Seventh Heaven - bartender, mother, teacher, friend, surrounded by people she loved; but at night, when she stood at the doorway of his empty office, she was just as lost as he was.

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**05 Phone:** She kept it in her pocket all the time, sat waiting pathetically beside it every night, dutifully passed messages through it everyday, and rushed to answer it whenever it rang just to see if it was him - but it never was.

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**06 Cry:** She'd sworn to herself at the age of fifteen that she would never cry again, not for anything... so why did those stubborn tears keep falling whenever she was alone in her bed at night, thinking about the boy who'd made a promise to her then and the man who'd left now?

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**07 Mirror:** She didn't need it - she already knew who was the biggest fool of them all; after all, wasn't she the one who'd gotten left behind and deep down, still - _still -_ waited for him to come back?

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**08 Knowledge/Knowing: **It took a long time for the kids to realize it - they'd thought he was just on another delivery; but she had known the morning she'd woken up to find the house feeling oddly empty without his solid, comforting presence that he was gone.

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**09 Sensory: **Even though he was gone, he was still everywhere - his scent in his room, the taste of his goodbye kiss on her lips, his touch on her leather gloves, and his face in her dreams every night.

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**010 Give: **She had given him everything - her friendship, her loyalty, her trust, her love, her whole heart - and it hurt to know that it still wasn't enough to get him to stay.

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**011 Trapeze: **She was dangling by a thread, three hundred feet up in the air, and if he let go of her - of them - she'd be free falling with nothing to catch her.

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**012 Jealousy: **It was an ugly thing, dark and shameful, and it didn't belong in a place that was supposed to be sacred and peaceful - but she couldn't help it; as she looked down at the bedroll on the Church floor, all she could think about was: he had left her and gone to Aerith.

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**013 Long: **She tried not to show how much she craved his presence, but when she spoke the last few words into the phone, all the longing injected itself into her voice, and she asked, "Cloud... how have you been?"

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**014 Guilt: **It made her slightly guilty that her last thought before she passed out again wasn't of Marlene and where she might be and who had taken her - but instead, all she could think as she fell back into his arms was that he was back, and gaia, it felt so good.

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**015 Moon*: **She'd read it before when she was younger, but she hadn't really gotten the point - but now she did and as she watched the silver moon rise over Edge, she had to agree with the novel's heroine: she hated the moon, because it was beautiful and he wasn't there to see it with her.

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**016 Sweater: **It was his "lucky" sweater, made by her own hands and the kids', and as such had a special place in Cloud's traveling gear as a talisman to ward off monsters when the kids weren't around to take care of him... and now, Tifa had to wonder what it meant if that old, worn ball of blue wool was here, and its owner wasn't.

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**017 Answer: **She could hear Denzel's hurt voice in the other room asking, "Cloud, where are you...?", and it made her feel helpless because she, the only remaining grown-up in the family, didn't have the answer to that, either.

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**018 Call: **When she saw the number on the screen, a flush swept across her cheeks and she thought it was pretty pathetic, but she could barely disguise the surprised delight in her voice as she answered, only to be disappointed and learn that someone else - some scared kid lost in the ruins of Midgar - had somehow gotten his phone.

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**019 Same: **She watched Denzel run expectantly out to the street every time he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine outside, and she didn't have the heart to stop the boy, because she wanted to do the same too.

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**020 Save: **She struggled to get up as a terrified Marlene looked up at her unknown opponent, wringing her tiny little hands and whimpering for Cloud; and all she could do was yell out a warning because she knew that no hero would come to save them now.

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**021 Living: **It was Marlene's voice that brought her back to reality as they both took in Cloud's things strewn all over the church floors, and when the little girl asked if Cloud lived here, Tifa was forced to admit that he wasn't with them anymore and that this place was where he lived now.

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**022 Questions: **The wad of used bandages raised a thousand questions from Marlene, and one more from her - why hadn't he trusted her enough to tell her?

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**023 Lecture: **Even as her heart broke, she knew one thing - she was still going to take him back if he wanted to return, but as she'd told Marlene, not without a lecture.

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**024 Late: **Her eyes opened slightly and met sapphire blue, and from the corners of her mind, she remembered the time when he'd held her - bruised and broken - like this before, and she was grateful that he always seemed to get there, even if his timing wasn't the best sometimes.

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**025 Right: **And there he was, staring out the window of Denzel and Marlene's room and into the Midgar night, and her heart broke because he looked so _right_ standing there, as if he'd always been there - as if he'd never left at all.

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><p>*the novel I'm referring to in #15 is Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, where in one of her letters, Judy Abbott says "I hate the moonlight, because it's beautiful and he isn't here to see it with me."<p>

So... how was it? I'd really appreciate it if you guys could drop a review telling me what you think of it :) Expect more emo from Cloud in the next chapter!


	2. Chapter 2: Cloud

So...

Here are the sentences from Cloud's POV. They fit in the timeline from Case of Tifa to the end of Advent Children Complete. I'm aware that Tifa's sentences weren't really all that organized, scatter-brain that I am, so I tried to arrange Cloud's sentences so that they made more sense. Some of them also have back stories that are my ideas for fics (unfortunately, I couldn't get around to making them).

They're also a bit more... _physical_ than Tifa's, but that's how it came out *shrugs and glares at mini-Cloud sitting on right shoulder* Stubborn man with his spiky, one-track mind. But he is kinda sweet.

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**026 Betrayed: **He'd been betrayed, toyed with, manipulated, controlled and fucked over in every way possible; it was only ever Tifa who had stuck with him until and beyond the end - and he'd repaid her by leaving her.

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**027 Moogle: **They deserved more than this, he thought as he placed the badly-wrapped toy that Marlene had been wanting for ages on the front door of the Seventh Heaven, but since he couldn't give them his presence, this was the closest he could get to telling them how much they would always mean to him.

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**028 Back: **He'd wanted to take it with him, the sweater they'd all worked hard on making for him, but he knew that if he did, he'd want to come right back every time he saw it.

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**029 Hands: **She had the most beautiful hands, he remembered as he looked down at the black liquid dripping onto his own - hands that could protect and defend, nurture and care, soothe and unsettle all at the same time.

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**030 Angel: **Looking at the stained glass depictions of heavenly beings that covered the church, he couldn't help but think that he'd had one in his life and that she was all that was good in his world - but he'd let that slip away from him when he left.

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**031 Hunger: **The bar was alive with the scents of good food and wine, but as he lingered in the shadows outside the window, his eyes settled on her graceful form moving with ease through the room and his body suddenly craved for a different kind of physical satisfaction altogether.

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**032 Disease: **All those foreign-sounding medical terms from the books he'd found didn't mean anything to him, but the black-bleeding bruises on his arm did: it meant that he wasn't strong enough to take care of them - of _her._

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**033 Ache/Pain: **He'd thought being run through by the world's cruelest blade was the worst pain he would ever have to endure... until he spent two months without her presence.

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**034 Pair: **He had never believed in soulmates, but thinking back to how she always seemed to know what he was thinking - how she was the only person who really understood him, the only person he could be himself with - he thought she was the closest thing to a soulmate he'd ever had.

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**035 Angular: **Rough - everything around him was made of rough, hard edges - and it made his gut ache as he pushed Fenrir to its limits over the barren desert, because he yearned for soft curves and gentle slopes and the feel of smooth midnight silk flowing between his fingers.

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**036 Dependent: **He was addicted to her - _needed _her; always, always, she was all he could see and feel and hear - and now that she wasn't with him, he grit his teeth at the hollowness in his chest and felt a frenzied kind of loneliness because even now, his body and soul craved the warmth and life that only she could give.

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**037 Us: **There was no more "us", no more "we"... instead, there was only "him", with "her" and "them" left behind in the place he no longer had the right to call his home.

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**038 Guidelines: **If only life had come with a step-by-step manual on how not to fuck up relationships with pretty-bartenders-who-were-supposed-to-be-friends-but-gaia-I-want-so-much-more-but-I-don't-even-deserve-her, he figured they'd both be much better off.

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**039 His:** He couldn't get enough of her and in his dreams, she was his - only his, always his... until he woke up, desperately empty and alone.

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**040 Black: **His arm was bleeding black, so he closed his eyes and tried to imagine a different kind of black to ease the pain - like the soft but tough black leather she wore that clung to her luscious body with each movement, or the heavy obsidian black sheen of her eyes shrouded by the dark fringe of her lashes when she looked at him sometimes, or the midnight black shine of her hair under the dim light of the bar.

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**041 Forget: **There were times when the pain of leaving them got so bad, he wished he could just forget all of it - but those moments never lasted, because... how could he ever want to forget the only good thing that had happened in his life?

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**042 Hero: **He'd been a hero to the world when he'd saved it from a madman, but why, _why_ couldn't he ever be a hero to the people who counted most to him?

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**043 Split-second:** She was on the ground and a fucking _building_ was about to fall on her, and he was almost too late, like he had been for Aerith - but this time, he was sure his world would break for good - wholly and completely - if he didn't get there in time.

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**044 Seawater:** He was drowning, drowning in unshed tears - hers and his - in guilt and nightmares and the black bleeding from his arm... and it was only her hand and her eyes and her words, "No giving up!" that helped him resurface.

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**045 End: **He was all that stood between the world and its plunge into oblivion, and as he launched his final attack, his mind flashed with the faces of all the people he cherished and settled longest on the face of the woman who'd stood firmly at his side through all of this.

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**046 Savor: **They both liked rain, he knew, and as the healing rain Aerith had sent fell light and warm on his face, he wished Tifa was standing there with him instead of on Cid's ship, so that they could savor this small miracle together.

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**047 Heaven: **He was in the Lifestream, and he was dead... and all he could think was that his Heaven, his Promised Land was not in this place - because there was no Tifa here.

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**048 Smile: **The children were all jumping around him, their faces bright and joyous, and he felt so light for the first time in forever - and then he saw her... and he couldn't help but smile - he was back where he belonged.

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**049 Clear: **It was only when he met her eyes - eyes that were so beautifully clear and open and, for the first time in a long while, happy - that it hit him: no, he wasn't alone anymore - in fact, he'd never been alone; it had just taken him some time - and a whole lot of heartache - to realize it.

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**050 Left:** All it took was a sweet smile and a "welcome home" from her, and it left him out of breath and had him wondering what had possessed him to leave in the first place.

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><p><strong>THE END<strong>


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